A Handbook of Contemporary Research

Edited by Paul Torremans

Copyright law is undergoing rapid transformations to cope with the new international digital environment. This valuable research Handbook provides a thorough and contemporary tableau of current thinking in copyright law. It traces the changes undergone and the challenges faced by copyright, as well as its roots and its diversity, combining to present a colourful picture of a dynamic research area.

Chapter 8: Could multimedia works be protected as a form of audiovisual works?

Handbook Chapter

Extract

Irini Stamatoudi1 1. Introduction During the last few years multimedia products have experienced exponential growth on the international market.2 This growth has in turn produced a need for their immediate protection. Although it is clear that multimedia products are considered to be works for the purposes of copyright,3 and therefore are protected as such, it is not immediately clear under which specific category of copyright works, if any, they come.4 This is important, especially for those countries, such as the UK, where classification of a work is necessary in order for the work to attract copyright protection. The experience of copyright lawyers and others to date shows that there is, arguably at least, a strong presumption that data including or mainly composed of sound and images, which are projected onto a screen, fall within Dr, Director of the Greek National Copyright Organisation. The multimedia market has seen an exponential growth in terms of turnover in the first half of the 1990s. Various estimates are available and whilst all of them show huge growth on average, the figures for 1995 and 1996 ($12.5 to 17 billion) were between 5 and 10 times higher than those for 1989 or 1992 ($1.2 to 3.2 billion). For further details see Vercken, G. (1996), Practical Guide to Copyright for Multimedia Producers, European Commission, DGXIII, pp. 16 seq. Other sources indicated that the growth in turnover was expected to continue and that by 1997 it could reach the figure of $23.9 billion, excluding video games....

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